


Mess

by Hekate1308



Series: The Crowley Chronicles [43]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crowley Lives (Supernatural), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23065300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hekate1308/pseuds/Hekate1308
Summary: It might have been hard work, but it’s worth it. The kitchen is clean again. One mess dealt with.It just figures that he soon becomes aware of another, quite different one.
Relationships: Crowley & Dean Winchester
Series: The Crowley Chronicles [43]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/844785
Comments: 5
Kudos: 40





	Mess

**Author's Note:**

> I realized it had been a while since I had saved Crowley (even if this is more an after-resurrection than a resurrection story). Enjoy!

It might have been hard work, but it’s worth it. The kitchen is clean again. One mess dealt with.

It just figures that he soon becomes aware of another, quite different one.

Dean has long considered supernatural entities rather naïve in certain regards. Just look at Cas. He’d literally been alive for millennia when they met and hadn’t mastered the art of _blinking_.

Not that that’s important right now. He’s getting better at the human thing, now that he’s staying at the bunker with them. 

But his point stands.

Creatures, man. Even if they happen to be Trickster gods who need a little help and are super thankful afterwards, so thankful that they read your mind and snap their fingers and make a miracle happen, they don’t think the consequences through.

For example, maybe because they are immortal, they never realize what it can do to your head to be resurrected, especially if you were more or less done with life and had no other option so you knifed yourself in front of those you would have called your friends…

What Dean is meant to say with all of that is that Crowley’s back.

And human.

And, Dean is rather sure, suffering from a pretty bad case of PTSD.

He’s trying to hide it, of course. And doing such a good job of it that Sam and Cas have no idea what’s going on.

But Dean knows the signs. He knows the signs because he has been living with them for years now, ever since he was ripped apart by hellhounds and crawled his way out of a coffin, still feeling the blood of those he’d tortured on his hands.

He knows what it feels like there is nowhere to go, no one to turn to, so you don’t speak of what happened and pretend it never did, and then you end up drinking by yourself feeling miserable.

Which Crowley is doing right now, he is pretty certain. Because here he is in the library after having checked the living room, and Sam and Cas are busy in the war room, and Crowley, formerly a demon known for showing up whenever he wanted just to annoy him, is nowhere to be seen.

Dean has just enough experience with him (from their Summer of Love – if Sammy calls it that one more time, he’ll strangle him with his own damn hair) to know that this isn’t a good thing.

And so he sets off, intent on finding the ex-king.

He’s not in his room, and he’s not playing billiard. Alright. That’s the two most likely options in case everything is fine not taken, which means things are most likely _not_ fine.

Dean sighs. Playing Doctor Phil was much easier when Crowley was still a demon.

Demons hardly ever regret things, for one thing.

He eventually finds him in one of the storage units, going through a box.

Quite frankly, he should a. be wearing gloves and b. told at least one of them he was about to do this, but Dean recognizes the gesture for what it is.

Being busy. Doing anything but listen to the voices in your head. Stay sane.

He clears his throat. “Need some help with that?”

Crowley – _Crowley_ – actually jumps and turns around, his eyes wide and empty. Dean can’t even tell if he’s understood him at all.

He was right. This is bad.

The one positive thing he can say about the situation is that at least Crowley has no powers with which he could wreak havoc anymore.

He blinks, and some lights return to his eyes. Thank God. The last thing they need is a catatonic former king. “Dean?”

“At the first try. Amazing.”

He shot him a glare. Good. Anger like this was good – fast passing, for one thing, but usefully distracting him from what else was going on inside his mind. “I am human, not an idiot.”

“Could have fooled me. God alone knows what the Men of Letters hoarded in here. Anything could happen.”

“I know how to protect myself”.

“I didn’t say you didn’t.”

“It was implied.”

For God’s sake, Dean can’t remember a single talk with Crowley that didn’t turn into bickering. Would be nice for a change, he decided. “Fine, I’m sorry.”

His apology throws Crowley off script. Probably because the guy hadn’t received a single one of those until he came to live with them, not a heartfelt one, at any rate. “I – it’s nothing.”

“It’s not, isn’t it.”

Crowley looks away and, despite Dean’s attempts, refuses to meet his eyes again.

Careful now, or this will all blow up in Dean’s face. “Come on, let’s have a drink and talk.”

“And what if I don’t want to talk?”

“Then I’ll pester you until you do.” He could wait, of course, and there was a time when he would have done just that, but this isn’t a moment where silence would do Crowley any good. Dean should know.

“You’re a menace” Crowley mutters as they walk back to the library.

“I learned from the best” he shoots back, and at least that gets a smile out of Crowley. A rather thin one, but still.

He’ll take what he can get.

* * *

“So what brought on your spring-cleaning?” Dean asks as soon as they are seated with two glasses of Craig.

“It’s March” Crowley points out, looking a little bit more like the smug demon he used to be.

And so the game is on. “So you decided to become our housemaid?”

“I’m the one who can probably guess the best what the Men of Letters stuffed in there” he replies, stalling, as they both know.

“Alright, that’s probably true, but the Crowley I know wouldn’t just start ruffling through –“

“I’m not anymore, am I.”

It takes Dean so much to surprise that he stops talking. Eventually he manages, “What do you mean?”

“I’m no the Crowley you’ve known anymore.”

“Because you’re human?” he huffs. “Get off it. Cas has been human on more than one occasion, and he always stayed himself.” Then he remembers Emanuel. “Well, as much himself as he could be, given the circumstances.”

Crowley’s expression suggests that he’s entirely unconvinced.

Dean sighs. “Look –“

“Castiel” Crowley interrupts him slowly, as if speaking to a child or someone who isn’t right in the head, “was an _angel_. He was never evil.”

“You –“ Dean stops talking because, strange as it is, his first instinct is to tell Corley that he wasn’t, either, and that would be profoundly untrue.

Thing is, he can’t really truly call his demonic self evil anymore, can he. When they met? Sure. Guy only wanted to blast Satan to the end of the earth and beyond because he happened to be an inconvenience. But the Crowley who usually came when they called, the Crowley who had tears in his eyes when his son said goodbye, the Crowley who killed himself for them to close the door and get rid of Lucifer… He can’t really call that one evil. Because he wasn’t anymore, not completely. Sure, demons are a nasty bunch – _all_ demons are nasty, that’s just how it works. But Dean can feel this truth in his bones, too. “People change” he tries.

“Demons don’t.”

Does he have to make everything complicated? Of course he does. Sometimes talking like this, trying to make sense of something that doesn’t, is all that helps, or at least appears to help, if only for a short while, and then you can go to sleep and pretend tomorrow is going to be a better day, even though it probably won’t be. “We know that’s not true.”

Now it’s Crowley who huffs, clearly in disbelief. “Please. Just because your brother injected me with human blood…”

“But that wasn’t all, was it.” How easy it would be to just agree. Human blood, you got corrupted (speaking from a demonic point of view), end of story. Only it wouldn’t be, because it never is.

Crowley doesn’t answer, but it’s as good as an admission. “Anyway, whether it was or not” ( _it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it_ wasn’t) “You are here now.”

“Ah. The patented Winchester answer. Deal with it and shut up.”

“No, if that were the case, we wouldn’t be sitting here now, would we” Dean points out.

“Sometimes, Squirrel, you being right is profoundly irritating.”

“Good” he grins, and finally gets something like a _real_ smile in return. He might be seeing the light at the end of tunnel. For today only – there’s always another one, especially when you least expect it – but that has to be enough.

“I hate it when you make sense” Crowley sighs. “Feathers and Moose I can just ignore.”

Dean very much decides not to wonder why he can ignore Spasm and Cas but not him. “Yes, well I hate it when someone goes through our storage without gloves on. Don’t know who’ll wipe up your splattered guts if something happens, but it ain’t gonna be me.” ( _A lie. Of course it would end up being him._ )

And then, Crowley actually surprises him, because he stares into his glass and admits “I might not have been thinking straight.”

Crowley just admitted a mistake. Dean’ll be damned. (a part of him is glad that Sam’s not here, because much as he loves his brother, he knows he would say something asinine like _We’ll make a decent human out of you yet_ , when Crowley, compared to what he was, already is, even only if you ask Dean).

“It was the screams” he continues. “Of the souls in Hell.”

He doesn’t have to clarify that he means of those he tortured. Dean knows that expression from his own mirror, too.

And the worst part is probably how good he was at it, because that’s how it works.

Although for Dean, what still haunts him aren’t the screams, but the please to stop. That said, sometimes there was little difference between those. “That one time” he suddenly says, “Sam broke his arm so I drove him to the hospital on my bike.”

He filly expects a sarcastic remark, or a complaint, something along the lines _of Do you actually think this is in any way interesting_ , but then, Crowley, human as he is now, replies quietly “Gavin broke his collar bone once, when he was five. It got infected. We thought he wouldn’t make it. I sat up with him, for almost a week before the fever broke.”

And isn’t that just another thing. It would be easy to call Fergus an abusive son of a bitch, because he was. But then, there’s also things like this.

That’s humans for you. Boxes and labels are all neat and easy, but then you try and actually apply them to reality and find that they are severely lacking because they tend to simplify things.

Dean doesn’t tell Crowley that he must think of Gavin often, or that he must wish things had gone differently, or that none of this should ever have happened, because he knows all of that stuff. Anyone who’s lived long enough to regret something does.

Instead he sits there and listens to the details of a childhood sickness, lived through centuries ago, and realizes it wasn’t about the screams at all, not tonight.

It might have been easier if it had been.

When Crowley finally falls silent, he clears his throat. “Anyway, movie night? You can choose.”

Even if this means they’ll probably end up watching something very pretentious Dean need subtitles for, but it’s worth it as Crowley nods, the old glimmer t back in his eyes, if slightly dimmed.

“And gloves next time, alright?” They always keep some around for that in the storage rooms anyway, as Crowley is well aware.

“Fine.”

“Good then. That’s good.” Dean doesn’t know what to do, so he pats his shoulder as he gets up.

One mess dealt with, anyway, like they always do.

One at a time.

Especially when they’re worth being cleaned up.


End file.
